A local museum recently opened an exhibition on the community’s Cold War-era uranium boom, and the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project took part.
Office of Environmental Management
March 4, 2025
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A Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project team member assists Moab Museum attendees at the Moab Project’s activity tables.
MOAB, Utah ― A local museum recently opened an exhibition on the community’s Cold War-era uranium boom, and the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project took part.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management’s (EM) Moab Project is essential to the exhibition’s story. This year the team is working to finish removing a cumulative 16 million tons of the radioactive material resulting from legacy uranium milling operations at the Moab Site.
The Moab Museum launched its newest exhibition with an opening free to the public. The exhibition, "U92: Moab’s Uranium Legacy," will have two separate phases. The first phase focuses on the uranium boom and the second phase will highlight its impacts.
The Moab Project supported the museum’s efforts to tell this story, providing site history and knowledge, and incorporating the DOE Office of Legacy Management’s Atomic Legacy Cabin, in Grand Junction, Colorado. That historic site presents the history of uranium mining and processing on the Colorado Plateau, as well as Grand Junction’s unique contribution to the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
“The Moab Site was established as a uranium ore processing mill back in the boom. The mill and DOE’s cleanup of the site are an integral part of Moab’s history with uranium,” Moab Federal Project Cleanup Director Matthew Udovitsch said.
A Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project activity table is shown at the opening of the Moab Museum’s uranium exhibition.
Moab Project staff members participated in the exhibition opening with informational and activity tables. They gave out envelopes containing wildflower seeds native to the area, highlighting DOE’s plans to revegetate the Moab Site with native plants after the Moab Project completes the cleanup.
In October, the Moab Project achieved another 1-million-ton cleanup milestone. The accomplishment marked the removal of a cumulative 15 million tons of mill tailings from the site. The contaminated soil and debris is shipped to an engineered disposal cell in Crescent Junction, 30 miles north of the Moab Site.
EM is partnering with the community to determine an end state for the site and plan for its future use.
-Contributor: Barbara Michel
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